Development of sound processing and other information processing technologies has provided electronic musical instrument devices that simulate the timbre of real musical instruments using electronics. Electronic musical instrument devices of the type described are made up of, for example, a housing that mimics the contours of a real musical instrument, a plurality of sensors, a sound producing unit and a control unit. The sensors are provided at positions where a player is to touch, and produce a predetermined data in response to a detection of a certain operation by the player. The control unit stores a program and a data for producing musical sounds. It generates a sound source data according to the sensor output (s) and makes a sound producing unit which includes a speaker produce it.
Some electronic musical instrument devices have a display unit such as light-emitting elements or a display screen. In such an electronic musical instrument device, an operating procedure is successively provided on the display unit, and the player operates the device and provides an input to the device according to the procedure, thereby to make the device produce musical sounds similar to those produced by a real musical instrument. In addition, some electronic musical instrument devices have lyrics appear on screen as in the case of “karaoke”. More specifically, lyrics data which is associated with operation instruction data representing what the player should operate is stored on a memory within the device. When producing the lyrics data on the display unit, the operation instruction data is also produced thereon along with it, to link the display of the lyrics with what the player should operate.
As apparent from the aforementioned example, conventional electronic musical instrument devices have an advantage that musical sounds can be produced at low costs in place of expensive real musical instruments or karaokes. In addition, these electronic musical instrument devices can be operated easily to play even by a person who cannot play a real musical instrument when he or she can learn unique operating procedures of the device.
Music is not of the kind that cannot be enjoyed unless you can play a musical instrument well. Music is familiar. Taking a guitar as an example, you can enjoy music easily anywhere as long as you can play chords even when you cannot play melodies regardless of whether you are alone or in flocks. However, there are many different chords and it is hard to learn them. For example, chords using three notes are C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Em, etc. Chords using four notes are Cmaj7, Dm7, Em7, Fmaj7, G7, Am7, Bm7flat5 etc. Some chords are triads or tetrads with an added note such as the note nine or eleven scale degrees from the root of a chord. Furthermore, you can use different chord forms to play a guitar depending on where to position your fingers on the fingerboard. That is, in the case of the C chord, the fingering at the low position is different from the fingering at the high position or the fingering at the middle position between them. Some attempts have been made to show proper fingering for these enormous amounts of chords on apiece of paper for each musical composition. However, paper products themselves are bulky and not easy for handling. In addition, usability is bad because it is necessary to flip pages in order to know a fingering position for a specific desired chord.
In the aforementioned conventional electronic musical instrument device, chord data may previously be prepared and an expected configuration is that the device directs the player to provide operation inputs for the chords. However, the player is inconveniently required to learn details of the operation to produce chord sounds if this is intended to be achieved by using an electronic musical instrument device having no display screen. Even using an electronic musical instrument device having a display screen, a lot of skill is required for the operation because an operation instruction for the chords should be entered according to the device-driven display progress. In an electronic musical instrument device such as a karaoke, the operation instruction cannot be entered at a singer's own pace. Therefore, it is impossible to sing an identical song slowly or at a quick tempo depending on the mood at a given time. In addition, it is impossible to play a musical instrument and sing a song at the same time.
In addition, in the conventional electronic musical instrument devices, only predetermined musical sounds are produced once the player has learned how to operate the device. Accordingly, skilled players are less and less attracted to the device and will eventually get bored.
These problems are common not just to guitars but to small electronic musical instrument devices that electronically produce sounds of other real musical instruments such as a piano capable of producing the chord sounds.
An object of the present invention is to provide a portable chord producing device which a player can play easily and freely at his or her own pace anywhere, regardless of the level of his or her skill and which allows the player to play the device and sing a song at the same time and to accompany many fellows singing in chorus, under the player's control.